


To Hell for the Company

by tjmystic



Series: Birthday Fics [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 13:50:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tjmystic/pseuds/tjmystic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mr. Gold and Emma on a road trip</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Hell for the Company

To Hell for the Company  
Birthday Fic #1

Rating: PG

Gingerwhovianrobotskeleten prompted: Gold and Emma road trip (mainly just them in the car and Gold being all… well Gold)

Author’s Note: Sorry to confuse everybody by posting this 5 days early. As I said in an earlier post, it turns out that I’m gonna be busy the day of and a few days before my birthday, so I’m going ahead and posting a few of them early. It also has to do with the fact that I’ve gotten a couple prompts I wanted to write even though I gave myself a 19-fic limit (as I’m turning 19). So, this way, it’s like the best of both worlds :)

 

New York wasn’t at all what he’d expected. Emma said it was because they hadn’t reached the city yet. But then, that was half the problem since he’d expected the whole state to be made of cities. So far, though, he’d seen nothing but frosted grass and telephone lines. 

Damned airport. He might not know what “the dangers of wind turbulence” were, but he was sure his magic could’ve protected them from it. Could’ve had his Bae back hours ago if the damn pilots hadn’t insisted on landing upstate instead. 

“You sure you don’t want one of these?” Emma grumbled, almost unintelligible under a mouthful of doughnut.

Gold shook his head no, clenching his gloved fists around the steering wheel. He much preferred his Cadillac, but the sheriff’s yellow bug was easier to bring en flight. 

“Suit yourself. Leaves more for me and Henry.”

She turned around to nudge the boy in the backseat. “Hey kid, you want breakfast? Henry?”

“Let him sleep, Miss Swan,” Gold muttered. “He’s got a long day ahead of him.”

“Yeah, well, it wouldn’t be so long if you didn’t insist on leaving immediately. We could’ve waited until morning, Gold.”

He chose not to answer that. She didn’t know how long he’d already waited for this. Didn’t know how many years he’d spent torturing himself, denying himself everything that made him human, just for the chance to apologize. 

She didn’t know how he’d rejected Belle’s love, knowing that it would ultimately backfire on him one way or another. 

His heart clenched at the thought of Belle, alone and afraid and ignorant of everything. There were so many things he’d change if he could, so many mistakes he’d take back.

It was just a heartbreaking coincidence that most of those mistakes involved her. 

“Hey Gold, slow down,” Emma snapped. 

He almost thanked her for the distraction. “I’m hardly speeding, Miss Swan,” he retorted instead. “And even if I was, you aren’t the sheriff out here.”

“It’s not that. Look.”

She pointed out the windshield, an annoyed slant to her eyes. 

He followed her finger through the dark, early morning fog. Dozens of shadowy beasts milled about the road, all of them stock still but visible because of their size alone. Gold was more than a little startled that he hadn’t seen them before. His eyes flashed to Henry in the back – he couldn’t afford to lose focus like that again.

“Hold up!” someone yelled up ahead, arms waving madly in the air. He kept shaking them even when he reached the driver’s side window. Needless to say, Gold’s first impression of the man’s intellect wasn’t very high.

“You guys are gonna have to wait awhile,” he said apologetically, shooting a nervous glance at the shadows behind him.

“Why?” Gold growled. “What is this mess?”

The man didn’t have to answer. One of the strange shadows stepped closer to the light, eyes reflecting the yellow glow. Gold half expected it to attack, but all it did was drop its head onto the hood of Miss Swan’s car. 

Moooooooooo!

“Yay,” Emma droned. “Cows.” 

Gold shook his head at her. “You really do have your father’s knack for stating the obvious, dearie.”

“We got it under control!” the man promised, now waving his hands at the sides of his head like a jazz dancer. “Just give us a few minutes and we’ll get them all put up.”

Gold waved the man off – he didn’t have time for such stupidity. Indeed, he was hard-pressed not to just turn them all into snails and be done with it. It wasn’t like he had anyone to tell him no – not now that Belle was gone. 

Unfortunately, though, Miss Swan seemed to be intent on taking her place as his conscience. 

“Don’t even think about it,” she warned, reclining her seat back just enough to lie down without disturbing Henry. “You try to use magic at all on this trip and I’ll –”

He chuckled bitterly to cut her off. “You’ll what? Shoot me? Sorry to disappoint, Miss Swan, but I can’t actually be killed.” He finally let off the gas to put the car in park. “You and your family, on the other hand –”

Her hand whooshed out to cover his on the gear shift, eyes flashing wild with anger. She gritted her teeth when she spoke, but her words were plain as day.

“I get that you’re pissed. I get that you’re used to hurting whoever to get your way and not thinking twice about it. But we need to get one thing straight – you don’t threaten my son.”

“I wasn’t threatening, dearie,” he growled, removing his hand to lock it on the steering wheel. “I was warning.”

“There’s a difference?” she scoffed.

“Yes, as a matter of fact. A difference your parents ought to know quite well.”

He didn’t elaborate, nor did he intend to, until she nudged him hard on the shoulder and sneered, “And?”

Gold had to give the sheriff points for not freezing under his gaze. “For one, I never threaten anyone – as you said, dearie, if I want to hurt someone, I don’t think twice about it. If you’re lucky enough to get a warning from me, though, it means I have enough morality left to give you the chance to save yourself first.”

Emma scoffed. “I don’t see how that’s any different, Gold. You intend to hurt Henry either way.”

“I would never, ever, hurt Henry, Miss Swan,” he declared vehemently. “I would never hurt any child. But when I’m angry, I’m not exactly myself.”

“Great – I’m headed to Manhattan with the Scottish Hulk,” Emma drawled. 

He banged his hands against the dashboard. “You’re not getting it, dearie! There are two people – and just two people – that I care about, and that’s Belle and my son. If I find out that either of them is lost, I have no idea how I’ll react. All I can say is that it won’t be pretty.”

Gold dropped his eyes to his lap to avoid seeing the disapproval on her face. It pained him to admit it, even if it was just to himself, but what he’d said wasn’t the whole truth. He cared about the Charming family despite all his attempts to do the opposite. It was just that he cared about Bae and Belle more, and he’d be damned if any of them, even Henry, kept him from getting them back. 

Disgust roiled in his stomach. For the first time in nearly three centuries, he’d almost felt like a human again. With Belle at his side, he’d allowed others into his shell, even allowed some of it to break off. He shouldn’t have let it surprise him that everything went to hell. Not when he proved time and time again that he was deserving only of the bad things that fate could throw at him and none of the good. He could hardly believe that he was once heralded for leading an entire kingdom’s children home. 

If even he couldn’t see himself as a hero, what hope did he have that Bae would?

Emma made a low coughing noise in her throat. He could see her chewing her lip in his peripheral, obviously trying to find the right words to say whatever was on her mind. At least in that aspect she took after her mother. 

“I… I guess I kinda understand,” she eventually muttered. 

Gold tilted his head to the side, but didn’t give any other hint that he was listening.

“I mean, I gave Henry up for adoption cause I was eighteen and stupid, but it still hurt. He was still a part of me. As soon as I got out of jail, I buried myself in work to keep from thinking about it. I couldn’t help but feel a little lost, though.” She gazed hard out the passenger window, the steel in her eyes reflected by the glass. “And I don’t really talk about it, but I’ve been in love before, too.”

Gold nodded as sympathetically as he could manage. “Graham.” The ex-sheriff had died in her arms – a rather befitting comparison to himself and Belle. 

“No. Well, maybe – I don’t really know. I wish that he…” Emma shrugged the rest of her sentence off. “Anyway, whatever went on with me and Graham, that’s not what I’m talking about.”

He let his hands drop from the wheel. “You can’t possibly mean Mr. Booth.”

“Of course not! I meant… you know what, just forget it.”

Gold bit the retort off his tongue. This was obviously an old wound for her – he had some experience with those himself. 

“Look, the point is, I know how it feels to lose somebody like that, okay? I know it hurts and you can forget who you are because of it. But that isn’t an excuse to… to do whatever it is that you do.”

He couldn’t keep the little smirk off his face. “‘Whatever it is you do’, indeed,” he murmured.

Emma sighed. “Look, neither of us is good with this emotional crap. Just… remember what Belle wanted from you, okay? Just because she doesn’t remember anymore doesn’t mean you should forget, too. You’ve got to be a human being for your son. Lying, acting like a monster – none of that’s gonna win him back.” She almost smiled at him, but she quickly morphed it back into a grimace. “Belle believed in you. Try to believe in yourself.”

Gold almost laughed. “If only it were that easy.”

“Yeah, well… I know you’re not a hero. But, apart from what you said before we left, you’ve never tried to hurt us – my family, I mean. Well, that isn’t true. You haven’t tried to maliciously hurt us?” She groaned in irritation. “You know what I’m talking about. The point is, you’re hardly a good person, but I’m willing to bank a little faith on you for the time being. And you know how Henry is – he’d trust you up to whatever weird line he draws, too.”

He tried valiantly not to show his shock at that, but he knew he failed the moment her eyes lit up. He nodded quickly and muttered a quiet “thank you” before she could call him out on it.

“Hey, nothing changes,” she smirked, though there was a hint of steel in her voice. “You come after my son and I will end you.”

At that, he did laugh. “I’ll hold you to it to try, dearie.”

She spared a quick glance out the windshield and tapped him on his knee. 

“The cows moved about ten minutes ago, Gold. We can go.”

He stared ahead at the paved road and, with a sigh, put the Beetle in gear. “I know,” he muttered.


End file.
